Clean Hands, accuser of Sánchez's wife and brother, expands its lawsuit over the DANA

Clean Hands, the author, on Saturday, of the first complaint for the management of the DANA, has now decided to expand it. The pseudo-union, which triggered the proceedings leading to the indictment for alleged corruption of Pedro Sánchez's wife and brother, pointed out in the initial lawsuit filed at the City of Justice in Valencia against the director of the State Meteorological Agency (Aemet), María José Rallo del Olmo, and the head of the Regional Agency for Security and Emergency Response, Emilio Argüeso Torres (who was misidentified in the initial document) for their "responsibility" in the repercussions of the natural disaster both in the Levante region of Spain and in Castilla-La Mancha. A week after the devastating consequences became visible, it has extended its initiative to Miguel Polo Cebellán, the top official of the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation, an agency under the Ministry for Ecological Transition.

Thus, the action of Clean Hands is directed and intensified against the reaction to the brutal storm by the two concerned administrations, the central and the regional. The far-right oriented group, which has regained prominence with the cases against Begoña Gómez and David Azagra (the musical pseudonym of the president's brother), is once again speeding up the process to try to oversee the management of the DANA. On Saturday, in its complaint, it attributed the crimes of negligent homicide, serious negligence resulting in injuries, and damages due to negligence to Rallo del Olmo and Argüelles for two events: Aemet's red alert at 7:31 a.m. on Tuesday and the citizen warning at 8:12 p.m. on the same day by the Valencian Emergency Agency, two actions in which the complainants perceive a deliberate delay in preventing the catastrophe.

The new document, now formalized and signed by Miguel Bernad, secretary general of Clean Hands, is based on Article 262 of the Criminal Procedure Law, which states that those who "by reason of their positions, professions, or offices have knowledge of any public crime, are obliged to report it immediately to the Public Prosecutor, the competent court, the investigating judge, and, failing that, to the municipal or the nearest police officer if it is a flagrant crime." And it expands the complaint, sending the judge the related emails, to Miguel Polo Cebellán for four alleged criminal acts: the Júcar Confederation has "a tool" - the Automatic Hydrological Information System (SAIH) - that "did not function correctly"; it has "a gauging station in the same Poyo ravine" through which "it could have detected and warned of the approaching flood"; "notified the Generalitat with an email, at 3:50 p.m. [on Tuesday, October 29, the day the DANA broke out] that the flow" of the aforementioned ravine "was low and did not update the data, through this same channel, until the situation was already critical at 6:43 p.m."; and, finally, that the state-run agency, despite having a budget of 58.2 million euros, "has only spent 1.1 million on preventive buildings and instead more than 8 million on staff payments."